Bema Seat Narrative
How many believers in Jesus Christ will there be over the ages? Have you ever considered that? Scripture tells us potentially billions, “as the sand which is on the seashore”.
There is a day ahead of us, a Great Day, when God will gather up His Church and we will stand before Him as a great sea of His people. Imagine the exhilaration! In the presence of God! In beautiful fellowship with our brothers and sisters in Christ! In sweet communion in Heaven! Shoulder to shoulder, singing praises to the Lord of the Marriage Feast in Paradise. We will be there, savoring the events leading up to this beginning of blissful eternity with God Himself. A sea of people, perhaps more than you can imagine. And you, standing there amongst the throng.
One day, this will happen to you if you trust Jesus with your soul. If you’ve ever been in a great crowd, you’ve noticed how easy it is to feel like a grain of sand. However, as we will stand before Jesus, together with the whole Body of the Church, He will call out each of our names, one by one, to come forward and kneel before Him. And as He is forever your personal Saviour, He will know you intimately as the individual He has walked with your entire life. In that moment each of us will be fixed under His gaze, and He will know everything about us, everything in us. And not just by a divine call on His knowledge, but more importantly by His loving, intimate crafting of your life, His patient walk with you here and now. He will look upon you and me, and weigh out what we have done with our lives since He Saved us, and He will test our lives with an honest, piercing accuracy. From what He reveals, He has promised to give to everyone according to what he has done as a steward of the life he has been given. Each of our lives, as disciples of Jesus Christ, will be fully exposed and weighed. So, the big question is, brothers and sisters in Christ, what will He say to you?
This depends upon the life and opportunities the Lord has put before you, and how you have strived to fulfill your responsibilities to manage them as He expects you to. This is the Christian life, the one you have been Saved for.
James instructs us to persevere and to engage our faith in the arena around us.
Paul tells us to recognize who we are now before God and to break away from the “pattern of this world”. He urges us to follow his example in tireless pursuit of the Prize.
Jesus commands those He has Saved to surrender their lives and pick up their cross, to cling to their first love of Him and overcome, so that we may eat of the “Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the Paradise of God”.
And why do they tell us this? Because of the common end, the Day, they all know lies ahead of us.
Enter, the Church. The Church of Jesus Christ exists to Worship God, to equip and impact the lives of It’s members, and to reach out to gather the Lost. It is the funnel God has chosen to use to prepare us for that Great Day.
John 14:21 reads:
“Whoever has My commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves Me. He who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I too will love him and show Myself to him.”
Here, Jesus explains the relationship a believer should have with the Lord through loving Him in Scripture and by experience, by obeying Him and doing what the He shows you is true, and then in experiencing Him as He reveals Himself to you. This is the cycle of our walk we hope to encourage, because it is true that anyone who brushes with God is never the same. The Church presents opportunities to encourage your walk and to step into this cycle with other people who love the Lord, too.
I long to see the Lord and hear Him say, “I’m pleased in what you’ve done with what I’ve given to you. You’ve done a good job.” Do you want to hear this from your Lord, too? Then make it your priority to make the most of your walk, and to take advantage of every opportunity you have to grow in the Lord. Run for the Prize, and long to hear Him say “Good job, my faithful and trustworthy servant”.